ABSTRACT

The article develops a theoretical outline for a comparative analysis of the North American and Israeli Jewish cultures as two systems of meanings. Relying theoretically on the “strong program” of cultural sociology and on Ephraim Shmueli's Seven Jewish Cultures paradigm, it suggests that the American-Jewish and Israeli cultures be understood as two different meaning-systems: that of emancipation, whose main thrust is hyphenation with non-Jewish cultures; and the nationalist culture, whose main corollary is Jewish demographic and symbolic dominance of the public space. This cultural difference can determine political, sociological, and intellectual differences no less than the other way around. To exemplify the “Two Cultures” approach, the article offers a short comparative anthropological history of the bat mitzvah in the North American and Israeli Jewish mainstream (i.e. the non-Orthodox) from the end of the Second World War through the present, to serve as a methodological window onto the meanings that the two communities attribute to “Jewishness” – that is, the nature of membership in the Jewish people. By taking a step back from the tumult of politics and the media, the Two Cultures framework may be able to uncover unspoken cultural gaps between the two largest Jewish centres in the twenty-first century, as well as find potential points of understanding between them.

摘要

本文为将北美和以色列的犹太文化作为两种意义系统进行比较分析制定了一个理论大纲。理论上依靠文化社会学的“强纲领”和以法莲施穆利的七种犹太文化范式，它表明美国犹太文化和以色列文化被理解为两种不同的意义系统：解放，其主要主旨是与非犹太文化的连字符；以及民族主义文化，其主要推论是犹太人的人口统计和公共空间的象征性主导地位。这种文化差异可以决定政治、社会学和知识上的差异，不亚于相反的方式。为了举例说明“两种文化”的方法，本文提供了从第二次世界大战结束到现在，北美和以色列犹太主流（即非正统派）的成人礼的简短比较人类学历史，以服务于作为方法论窗口，了解两个社区赋予“犹太人”的意义——也就是说，犹太人成员的性质。通过从政治和媒体的动荡中退后一步，“两种文化”框架或许能够揭示 21 世纪两个最大的犹太中心之间不言而喻的文化鸿沟，并找到它们之间潜在的理解点。